Monday, August 13, 2012

The home advantage

The Olympics just got over and the US of A has got back to the top after having been relegated to second place by China at Beijing four years ago. Given Great Britain's fantastic performance this year, I went back to look at the effect of home advantage through the Olympics and the numbers are quite clear.

Here are the performances of countries that have hosted the Olympics in the last few years. Given below are the top locations by medal tally along with exceptions if any. I am leaving out USA from the list here as they have been consistently good everywhere!

Location

Rank

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Total

Great Britain

London – 1908

1

56

51

38

145

London – 2012

3

29

17

19

65

Beijing – 2008

4

19

13

15

47

Antwerp – 1920

3

16

15

13

44

Stockholm - 1912

3

10

15

16

41

London
- 1948

12

3

16

6

23

Exception

China

Beijing – 2008

1

51

21

27

99

London – 2012

2

38

27

23

88

Athens – 2004

2

32

17

14

63

Sydney – 2000

3

28

16

15

59

Barcelona – 1992

4

16

22

16

54

Greece

Athens – 1896

2

10

17

19

46

Athens – 2004

15

6

6

4

16

Sydney – 2000

17

4

6

3

13

Atlanta – 1996

16

4

4

0

8

Australia

Sydney – 2000

4

16

25

17

58

Athens – 2004

4

17

16

16

49

Beijing – 2008

6

14

15

17

46

Atlanta 1996

7

9

9

23

41

Melbourne – 1956

3

13

8

14

35

Spain

Barcelona – 1992

6

13

7

2

22

Athens – 2004

20

3

11

5

19

Beijing – 2008

14

5

10

3

18

Atlanta – 1996

13

5

6

6

17

London - 2012

21

3

10

4

17

As you can see, the best performances by most of these countries are on their home soil. If you were to discount the positive effects of hosting the Olympics on the performance in subsequent years, then the home advantage is even more striking. This effect is seen for India as well if we look at the Asian games results.

Where does this home advantage come from? Is it because of crowd support, familiar surroundings, biased umpiring/judging or something else altogether?

As this is largely a technical blog, I will try and make a connection here, however tenuous it may be.

As an Indian entrepreneur, do you believe that you have a home (dis)advantage when it comes to running tech businesses, especially startups trying to find a market within India.